Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Big boost for WGBH’s affiliate on the Cape and the Islands

Boston’s WGBH Foundation has been working for years to
improve the strength, coverage and reliability of its WCAI 90.1 signal on the
Cape and the Islands. As of this week, thanks to the installation of a more
powerful 12,500 watt transmitter in Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard, WCAI’s
locally-focused programming as well Boston’s WGBH 89.7’s local content and NPR’s
national programming is now available to 200,000 additionalnew listeners on
the Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, South Coast and part of Rhode
Island. Federal Communications
Commission(FCC) approved WGBH’s application for WCAI’s power increase four
years ago. Along with its other two affiliates – 94.3 in Brewster and 91.1 in
Nantucket – WGBH now completely covers the entire Cape and the Islands reaching
a potential audience of 470,000.

In addition to expanding WCAI’s wattage on 90.1, the newly installed
transmitter features HD service capability. 90.1 HD2 channel features audio stream of WGBH’s
WCRB 99.5/Classical New England.

BRW Notebook :Another magical ride : That loud "ho-ho-ho" you might have heard in Boston last week was traced to Greater Media’s offices of WMJX/Magic 106.7. Nielsen Media released the ratings for its “holiday period” (Dec. 4 to Jan. 1) a week ago, and the light-rock outlet cleaned up with its all-Christmas format for the second straight year. Among listeners ages 6 and up, Magic pulled a 11.8 share, meaning that about one in eight radio listeners was tuned in. No. 2 in the ratings was Top 40 WXKS/Kiss 108.Programming Notes : While everyone is speculatingon the future of WEEI's afternoon drive line-up, Joe Zarbano has been named executive producer of WEEI 93.7 and the WEEI Sports Radio Network. He previously served as producer of the "Planet Mikey" and "Mut & Merloni" programs on WEEI. Before that, Zarbano was a parttime producer and an intern for the Sports outlet....Boston radio vet Lisa Garvey is back on Boston airwaves with a new "A Train"show heard on Sunday morning on WUMB 91.9 from 8am to Noon. Garvey wasa longtime River 92.5 jock up until her departure in March 2012...Earlier this month, Entercom's news/talker WRKO 680 had pulled Michael Savage of its night-time schedule and inserted "The Jim Bohanon Show" into 10pm-1am weeknight slot. Savage's syndicator Cumulus has moved his national show into 3-6pm ET afternoon slot so running him on a 7-hour tape-delay made little sense to WRKO. Bohanon's nighttime show is aired live...WRKO's sister station WEEI 93.7 has replaced Fox Sports Radio with NBC Sports Radio from 1am to 6am. In addition, WEEI affiliation switch during overnights also means that WUFC 1510 has shed any of the remaining NBC Sports Radio programming left on its schedule after it re-branded to 1510 Yahoo Sports last September. The station is now airing only Yahoo Sports Radio shows. WUFC is also promising to launch another new locally-based national show very shortly. [Since last September(BRW 9/16/13) station has been producing "The Dieahards"(10am-Noon) for YSR. It is hosted by station's general manager and on-air personality Anthony Pepe]...As we're approaching the 1-year anniversary of Glenn "Big O" Ordway's exit from WEEI(BRW 2/14/13), the Herald has this story about him possibly being on new management's 'wishlist'. On his Twitter feed, Big O, who's in the process of launching soon-to-be-announced multi-platform media venture, has denied the rumor. Two months ago Ordway joined SiriusXM's "Mad Dog Sports Radio" channel as its weekend morning host(BRW 11/15/13).That's all she wrote : Former Entercom Boston boss Julie Kahn has left the radio group to take a role at Regan Communications. Kahn, who spent more than 13 years at Entercom, the parent company of WRKO 680, WAAF 107.3/WKAF 97.7, WEEI 850 and WEEI 93.7, will be an executive vice president, sports/media and special adviser to the boss, George K. Regan Jr. Kahn had been running all four stations until she was replaced by former Entercom chief Jeff Brown,
who has also since exited.. Her last day at Entercom was January 10th.

2 comments:

Laurence Glavin
said...

I thought WUFC-AM ALREADY had a locally-originated show on Yahoo, its 10:00 am till noon Eastern time show. Anthony Pepe has from time to time promoted the idea that it's heard on stations in some cities that do NOT in fact carry his show live, if at all. Tom Taylor says that some contracts NBC Sports Radio had with affiliates were for one year, and WUFC's just came up.